JPMorgan is one of a kind. Even in private banking, it blazes its own trail. It focuses heavily on ultra-high net-worth clients, and ensures that the range of services that it offers to clients is elite, global and precisely targeted.
The US lender knows that many (if not most) of its UHNW clients are family groups with complex and interlocking needs.
Some might simply be focused on getting the best deposit rates. Then there are family groups who focus on transferring wealth to the next generation – and as they do so, their needs become more nuanced and their financial and geographic expectations far greater.
JPMorgan doubled down on its focus on Asian UHNWs about a decade ago, at a point where the global financial crisis was ebbing and personal wealth was soaring.
It realized that a great number of future dollar millionaires and billionaires were lying under its radar, in the aspiring mass-affluent sector, so it reached out to them. It was a decision that paid off handsomely.
It has invested heavily in technology and in training its relationship managers. It has also cleverly positioned itself as an invaluable ally for Asian UHNWs looking to ring-fence a sizeable share of their family wealth in the US, be it for personal consumption, or to prepare for the future needs of children and grandchildren.
As next-generation Asian family members look to follow their own financial route in life, some of them are building their own family offices in the US and seeking out specific investment advice and opportunities. That has become an important driver of growth, and helped to generate a record inflow of private banking assets into the lender in Asia in 2019.
Under Kam Shing Kwang, the Asia chief executive of JPMorgan Private Bank, it continues to offer world-class investment advice to clients during the Covid-19 crisis, leading on from a year in which it advised customers to de-risk in light of signs that a multi-year equity cycle was starting to wind down.
And its flagship conferences remain as much of a pull to UHNW clients as ever, including the latest and handily timed JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, held in January 2020 in San Francisco, which hosted many of the largest healthcare industry firms on the planet, as well as several pre-IPO prospects.